Housing & Revolution

A new housing crisis has embroiled people all over the world. In response, self-organized and bottom-up tenant movements have exploded in strength to challenge the present reality. These movements are increasingly working class in character, as growing inequality erodes the very standards of living that capitalism promised to people but cannot sustain. While this housing crisis is far from the first in capitalism’s history, the panelists want to make it the last. By exploring the relation between housing and revolution, we will discuss what it means to end the current housing crisis as well as what it takes to prevent future ones from occurring.

Chris Gardner is an LA-based organizer for the LA Tenants Union (LATU) and the International Marxist-Humanist Organization (IMHO).

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jed Parriott is the Co-Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee for the Democratic Socialists of America – Los Angeles. He is also an organizer with the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) and the NOlympics Coalition.

René Christian Moya is an organizer with the LA Tenants Union and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). He is also a member of the School of Echoes—a space for critical reflection on the conditions in working class and poor communities, including (but not limited to) struggles against gentrification—and the Democratic Socialists of America. He is also the co-founder of an LA-based editorial collective, Konkret Media.

You can find Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal‘s writing in the LA Times, Playboy, Artforum, and Rhizome, but mostly in Art in America. She is a founding member of the LA Tenants Union, a member of School of Echoes, and the author of TJR’s Two-Evil Endorsements for every election in LA. Clothes and quips @xxexegesis.

Alexia Veytia-Rubio is a Mexican translator, activist interpreter, transborder person, and Language Justice advocate living in Los Angeles. She is part of the language experimentation collaborative Antena Los Ángeles and organizes with the Los Angeles Tenants Union’s Language Justice Committee in an effort to promote the shared commitment to create multilingual spaces. She believes interpretation and translation are seminal tools for social justice in cross-language and cross-race work.